Short Takes

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his cabinet Sunday that he has made fighting anti-Semitism a major concern of his government in the wake of a two-day forum in Jerusalem designed to develop a global initiative to deal with the problem.
"The prime minister said that until now it had a low profile [in Israel]," said Natan Sharansky, who as minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs organized the forum. "In Israel, anti-Semitism was seen as a diaspora problem. Now it is understood that that has to be changed."

"Klan-destined" is how Steve Aronson describes his acting career. Since the limelight lured him away from legal work in 1980, he's played both sides of the law, beginning with a Ku Klux Klan leader in Spike Lee's "Malcolm X."

Wedding bells (er, accordions) may be heard this weekend on "Sex and the City."
It seems the Klezmatics, perhaps America's best-known klezmer ensemble, recently taped a few numbers for an episode of the HBO hit series that features the WASPy and svelte Charlotte York, newly converted to Judaism, apparently headed for the chupah with her latest paramour, the pudgy Jewish lawyer Harry Goldenblatt.
The installment premieres Sunday at 9 p.m.

Somewhere in the United States, a man found himself behind an elderly woman in the checkout line at a supermarket the other day. As she counted out her money, she discovered she didn't have enough for one remaining item in her hand. Put it on my bill, the man whispered to the cashier.
The old lady, a little confused by the transaction, went home with the item: a box of Shabbat candles.
The man had done his clandestine act of kindness, indirectly, because of Shoshana Greenbaum.

If Joe Lieberman's political career flounders, he could always consider the rabbinate.
Last Shabbat, the Democratic presidential candidate delivered a 20-minute d'var Torah that was well received by an overflow crowd of more than 700 worshippers at tony Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach.

The non-religious Jew, the secular, the humanist, the cultural Jew: in a city rich with synagogues and tradition-oriented classes, where are they to turn?
There will soon be a new haven for such folks, whose ranks, according to recent studies, are swelling.
Those in the region who describe themselves as "just Jewish" or "secular" or "having no religion" have nearly doubled in the last decade, from 13 to 25 percent, according to the recent New York population study.